Joe Manchin: ‘I’m so proud of the NRA’

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who suggested earlier in the week that the time had come for some gun control restrictions, said on Wednesday that he’s “not supporting a ban on anything” and he repeatedly defended and praised the NRA.

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Manchin has an ‘A’ rating from the NRA, and applauded the group’s decision to hold a press conference Friday where they’ve promised to offer “meaningful contributions.”

“I can’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to any of the things,” Manchin added when asked if he would support restrictions on magazine size or an assault weapons band. “Because all I’ve asked for, I want the NRA to tell me why we have any weapon you might want. Is there any grounds or any changes or anything they would like to look at? I don’t know. I can’t even get a conversation to have responsible people at the party, if you will, or the table, to finally come out with a conclusion.”

“I don’t know anyone in the hunting or sporting arena that goes out with an assault rifle,” Manchin said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I don’t know anybody that needs 30 rounds in the clip to go hunting. I mean, these are things that need to be talked about.”

Manchin opened the interview Wednesday by declaring himself a “defender of the 2nd Amendment,” announcing he didn’t plan to sell his guns and said he had been discussing the issue with the NRA, a group he praised effusively.

“These are my friends,” Manchin, who previously served as governor, said of the NRA. “They’re good people. They’re hurting. They’re in pain the same way as every American about what happened to these twenty little children. And I’m not going to let anybody be villainized.”

“I’m so proud of the NRA,” Manchin said later. “I’m so pleased they agreed to be part of this.”

Manchin spent more of the interview putting the focus on violent video games and mental health issues.

“Look at Grand Theft Auto, put out by Rockstar Games in New York City and see what it promotes,” Manchin said, adding later: “Shouldn’t that be looked into and maybe be banned?”

I am proud of the NRA also! I paid for a life membership for each of my grandkids yesterday as an extra Christmas present. Until some realizes that the issue here is mental health and not enforcing current laws, you can make 20 new laws and they will just be ignored by the criminals! The liberals have never solved a problem in my life time (i'm 70), they only make problems worse for all!

Please search the Bath School disaster which happened in Michigan in 1927 where 38 children as young as 8 were bombed to death by a nut bent on revenge. The NRA teaches gun safety. Fix our mental health care system.

They can take a bow for fostering the climate that lets every nut, whiner, PTSD comrade, or fool that has to have a mind altering drug just to get through each day a gun to shoot little 6 year old's in the face multiple times at Christmas!! Oh, and their teachers!!! What big bad white men you are!!!!

The 2nd amendment has nothing to do with "hunting" it has to do with the right to defend yourself. When it was written it was written to address the British Colonial Monarchy which had a single King ruling over his subjects. It's intent was to acknowledge that individuals not just kings had an already existing right to defend themselves.

The founders wrote the 2nd amendment to secure that right, and to ensure that no king could ever “rule” over subjects in America. That’s made clear by this quote:

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive."

---Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (Philadelphia 1787).

"I sympathize with people who want to ban guns, but I can't agree with them. We have to be careful in our zeal to abolish guns that we don't wind up with counter-productive legislation that will leave armed only the people most likely to do harm with them."

To ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow... For society does not control crime, ever, by forcing the law-abiding to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of criminals. Society controls crime by forcing the criminals to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of the law-abiding.

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

Somehow I just knew A WALK-BACK was coming from Joe, who the NRA supported during his WV campaign for congress ! These guys, ie (the Repubs) don't give a rats-ass about anyone, or anything except getting and staying in office & in Washington.

Gun violence would have to hit them personally (God Forbid), before they would be ready to stand up against lunatics possessing automatic weapons !

I think obama may have already started going around Congress and the consent of the people and started instituting gun control through back-end bureaucracy. Has anybody else been hit with an abnormal delay in getting an AR15 rifle purchase approved? It used to take an hour, but my purchase approval from yesterday has been 24 hours and counting and the gun shop owner tells me there is no word from the state as to when it's going through...

Manchin is right, we need a discussion about everything, because just banning guns is not the answer. There are a lot of knee-jerk reactions right now and instead of making quick decisions we need to determine the best way forward. We need to look at more than just banning assault weapons, we need to look at how we as a nation treat those who have mental health issues. We need to look at how our health system and insurance system looks at mental health issues, because In the hands of a sane person a gun proves no more harmful than a car and it seems pretty obvious to me that Adam Lanza was far from a sane person. It also goes to show you that no matter how many gun laws there are, criminals still manage to get their hands on what they need.

So, when the loony-tunes take our guns away from us just to discover it made things worse, do we get them back? Too funny! That's why we have to fight tooth and nail to prevent the crazies from taking them in the first place! Write or call your congressman/woman today and demand they support the 2nd Amendment!!